This fall’s updated booster shot may not be the last one that older adults will need this year to remain well-protected against COVID-19, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines chief.
In an interview with medical news outlet Stat, Peter Marks, MD, PhD, said that fast-mutating SARS-CoV-2 will likely make the current booster less effective more quickly than he would like.
“I would be lying to you if [I said] it doesn’t keep me up at night worrying that there is a certain chance that we may have to deploy another booster — at least for a portion of the population, perhaps older individuals — before next September, October,” he told Stat.
No durable vaccine yet
The challenge for vaccine makers is to produce more durable COVID-19 vaccines, according to Marks, who heads the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Despite the overall efficacy of the current mRNA vaccines, other vaccine types may need to be studied to find one that can provide longer-lasting protection, he said.
In the meantime, officials and pharmaceutical companies will continue to pursue vaccines that tackle the latest, most dominant variants, just as they have long done with influenza, he told Stat. Future mRNA vaccines may be bivalent, similar to the updated booster. These would likely contain the original SARS-CoV-2 strain and the most recent dominant strain, he noted.
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